NBA
Will a team sign Bronny James just to bring in LeBron?
Rumours have swirled that teams could bring in Bronny just to lure LeBron to their ranks - but could this actually happen?
The cut-throat nature of sport sees players, managers and directors do crazy things in order to win. Rules are stretched like the jaw of an anaconda and limits are pushed as far as possible to get the very last drop of success from the barrel that does not give such a reward away lightly.
In this case, the rumblings of teams potentially bringing in Bronny James to attract LeBron - his father - to the side, are very much alive. It has been suggested that various sides across the US would draft Bronny in order to entice ‘The King’ to their squad. But could such a thing actually happen?
‘If we draft Bronny James, would you come as well?’
Well, according to Shams Charania of the Athletic, it would “not surprise [me] if a team does reach out to Rich Paul (Bronny’s agent), anyone else around Bronny James, anyone who has any idea, or even LeBron James himself, and says ‘hey, if we draft Bronny James, would you come as well?’”
Lakers ‘going to have to prepare for life without LeBron’
However, don’t get your Bronny James merch out from the drawer just yet. “The answer to that”, says Charania, “is going to be ‘no’. As of right now, that’s not a given, that’s not something that is going to be preordained. Now, listen, if the Lakers go out there and draft Bronny James, they feel like he’s going to be a good fit for them.
“The Lakers are in the midst of a coaching search and one of the important elements of that search is going to be player development. LeBron James, I reported, is going to play about up to 2 NBA seasons, so the Lakers themselves, assuming they get LeBron back, are going to have to prepare for life without him”, he concluded.
LeBron himself has made his thoughts clear on playing with Bronny, saying that “I need to be on the floor with my boy, I gotta be on the floor with Bronny. Either in the same uniform or a matchup against him. I don’t mean like [guarding one another all game]—because he’s a point guard and I’m a, at this point now I’m playing center or whatever the team needs from me. But I would love to do the whole Ken Griffey Sr. and Jr. thing. That would be ideal for sure.”
As for Bronny, he was less sure about playing with his father. “My dream has always just been to put my name out” he continued, “to make a name for myself, and get to the NBA, which is everyone’s end goal that’s here. I never thought about just playing with my dad, but of course he’s brought it up a couple of times. But yeah, I don’t think about it much.”
“When I get there, I don’t think it would just be like, me and my dad. I would be happy about getting into the league instead of me thinking about playing with my dad,” Bronny added. “But that’s not my mindset at all. I’m just trying to put in the work and see where it takes me.”